An essential road map to modern Asia’s dynamic transition on the world stage from the foreign policy expert and author of There Goes the Neighbourhood. The world has never seen economic development as rapid or significant as Asia’s during recent decades. Home to three-fifths of the global population, this restless continent will soon produce more than half of the world’s economic output and consume more energy than the rest of the world combined. All but three of the planet’s current and nascent nuclear powers are Asian, and it has the greatest growth in weapons spending of any other region. Yet, surprisingly little has been written about the future of Asia. Restless Continent is the first book to examine the economic, social, political, and strategic trends across the world’s largest continent, providing the necessary framework for thinking about the future of Asia—and the world. A professor of international affairs at Australian National University, Michael Wesley looks at the psychology of Asian countries becoming newly rich and powerful. He explores the geography and politics of conflict, and offers persuasive ideas about how to avert dispute, or even war. Written for general readers and policy specialists alike, Restless Continent is an agenda-shaping book about international affairs in the twenty-first century.

In Restless Nation, James M. Jasper isolates a narrative that lies very close to the core of the American character. From colonial times to the present day, Americans have always had a deep-rooted belief in the "fresh start"—a belief that still has Americans moving from place to place faster than the citizens of any other nation.

A few kilometers northwest of Johannesburg, South Africa, is the Cradle of Humankind caves. This UNESCO-declared world heritage site is full of anthropological, genealogical, and mystical clues about the evolution of mankind. She heard the caves aren't a mere tourist attraction, but rather a realm believed to have powers that can unlock the lost facets of one's destiny. Trudging along the cave trek with Europeans dressed in safari gear, clicking their digital cameras at every fossil in site, she entered the caves without a camera, but only instinctive driven hope that she will find something that will help her navigate through life with ease. Indeed, she does find something in the caves other than rocks and bones. She is certain she locked eyes with something hidden in the caves' crevices. She is certain it is a living being, an elderly man perhaps. He tried to communicate with her, but she couldn't engage him as she had to move swiftly along with the rest of the tourist crowd. Since the cave visit, her dreams are dominated by this man's piercing gaze. Who is he? How long has he been in there? With time, she learns to communicate with him, harnessing a sincere friendship not bounded by time, physicality, or age. He requests her to record her observations about life outside the cave, trusting that her findings about a changing South African sociopolitical landscape he is estranged from, will enable him to survive and rule the land he has been exiled from for more than four hundred years.

Provides information about the geologic and meteorologic processes that shape the Earth's environment, reporting on cataclysmic events such as volcanos, earthquakes, and tornadoes, and looking at some of history's most devastating natural disasters.

"A memoir, lavishly illustrated with the author's own photos, of train travel along the legendary rails of America reflecting a lifetime's love of observing and riding trains while tracing the evolution of American passenger trains from the 1950s to the present"--Provided by publisher.

Eliza Pratt Greatorex (1819–1897) was America’s most famous woman artist in the mid-nineteenth century, but today she is all but forgotten. Beginning with her Irish roots, this biography brings her art and life back into focus. Breaking conventions for female artists at that time, Greatorex specialized in landscapes and streetscapes, traveling from the Hudson River to the Colorado Rockies and across Europe and North Africa. Her crowning achievement, a monumental tome of drawings and narratives titled Old New York, awakened the public to the destruction of the city’s architectural heritage during the post–Civil War era. Exploring Greatorex’s fierce ambition and creative path, Katherine Manthorne reveals how her success at forging an independent career in a male-dominated world shaped American gender politics, visual culture, and urban consciousness.

Over the past 250 years of momentous change and dramatic upheaval, China has proved itself to be a Restless Empire. Tracing China’s course from the eighteenth-century Qing Dynasty to today's People’s Republic, Restless Empire shows how the country’s worldview has evolved. It explains how Chinese attitudes have been determined by both receptiveness and resistance to outside influence and presents the preoccupations that have set its foreign-relations agenda. Within two decades China is likely to depose the United States as the world’s largest economy. By then the country expects to have eradicated poverty among its population of more than one and a half billion, and established itself as the world’s technological powerhouse. Meanwhile, some – especially its neighbours – are afraid that China will strengthen its military might in order to bend others to its will. A new form of Chinese nationalism is rising. Many Chinese are angry about perceived past injustices and fear a loss of identity to commercial forces and foreign influences. So, will China’s attraction to world society dwindle, or will China continue to engage? Will it attempt to recreate a Sino-centric international order in Eastern Asia, or pursue a more harmonious diplomatic route? And can it overcome its lack of democracy and transparency, or are these characteristics hard-wired into the Chinese system? Whatever the case, we ignore China’s international history at our peril. Restless Empire is a magisterial and indispensible history of the most important state in world affairs today. WINNER OF THE 2013 ASIA SOCIETY BERNARD SCHWARTZ BOOK AWARD

A Long and Restless Journey in Pursuit of Happiness with Empty Hands of Faith: An Authoritative Resource for Bushfallers is a brilliant how to collection of provocative essays that addresses the predicaments surrounding the rollercoaster and sometimes paralyzing crusade of wretched and disillusioned Africans deserting their homelands to seek lifes greener pastures overseas. It is a book on contemplative life that examines with concrete Biblical determinations the spectacular challenges faced by prisoners of hope - bushfallers - in their epic effort to migrate, assimilate, and thrive in their adopted American home. Bat has ingeniously and persuasively interlaced humor, wit, and the Bible to engage readers on a subject that is at times delicate, private, and mystifying to discuss publicly. He advances forthright strategies for bushfallers to follow in order to optimize every moment of their expedition. The book proffers reliable self-help instructions on how to dodge or contend with the abstract, confrontational, and perturbing experiences of the work-a-day life overseas. He proposes knowledge and skills needed in the areas of tactical positioning; indispensable human, material, and social capital; as well as mental and physical astuteness essential for persistence. Most importantly, Bat invites the bushfaller as well as the onlooker to develop spiritual character and pledge total allegiance to the Lord for faith, strength, and direction. This collection of essays is current, thorough, and complete in its coverage of the multidimensional challenges faced by the bushfaller. As the prospects for living and survival gets even darker and heartless at home, and as the immigration climate gets menacing and precarious for bushfallers overseas, it becomes even more imperative to be proactive, innovative and resourceful in handling lifes vicissitudes.